Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

As the weather forecast has started to suggest we may now start getting overnight frosts, it is time for us to bring the remaining butternut squash, pumpkins and marrows in from the polytunnel. We have been harvesting these since late summer and enjoying them in roast meals and casseroles but knowing we would still have some left for our annual soup making. Last year we made 20 litres of soup using marrow, squash, carrot, parsnip and onion which gave us 19 bags for the freezer and one that we ate straight away (with freshly baked bread, yum!!).
This year the harvest of marrow and squash has been similar to last year and we have the addition of pumpkin for the first time. Our carrot growing has been highly successful as usual and we still have two rows in the polytunnel which will be left in place until we are ready to use them for the soup. As the carrots are under ground, they should not be affected by the frost which is why we can leave them in place! Our parsnips were not as successful as we wanted them to be and so unfortunately we will only have one or two to add to the soup this year.
Quite a number of vegetable gardeners like to grow vegetables which are as large as can be. As you can see from the photo, ours are not that big: we weighed the largest of each one and got the following results: marrow 3.9kg, squash 2.8kg, pumpkin 4.6kg - but we are looking for flavour rather than size.
We hope to make the soup in the next couple of days so more on this later in the week!